MONICA
LEWINSKY AND ME: EMERGING FROM “THE HOUSE OF GASLIGHT” IN THE AGE OF
#METOO

On the 20th
anniversary of the Starr investigation, which introduced her to the
world, the author reflects on the changing nature of trauma, the
de-evolution of the media, and the extraordinary hope now provided by
the #MeToo movement.

How do I know him? Where have
I seen him?The Man in the Hat looked
familiar, I thought, as I peered over at him a second time.

It
was Christmas Eve 2017. My family and I were about to be seated
at a quaint restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village. We had just
come from Gramercy Park—on the one night each year when the
exclusive park (accessible only to nearby residents with special
keys) opens its gates to outsiders. There had been carols.
People had sung with abandon. In short, it was a magical night.
I was happy.

Amid
the glow of candles and soft lighting, I strained to look again
at the Man in the Hat. He was part of a small group that had
just exited the main dining room. They were now gathering their
belongings, likely vacating what was to be our table. And then
it clicked.He
looks just like . . . no, couldn’t be. Could it?

A
student of Karma, I found myself seizing the moment. Whereas a
decade ago I would have turned and fled the restaurant at the
prospect of being in the same place as this man, many years of
personal-counseling work (both trauma-specific and spiritual)
had led me to a place where I now embrace opportunities to move
into spaces that allow me to break out of old patterns of
retreat or denial.

At
the same moment I stepped toward the Man in the Hat and began to
ask, “You’re not . . . ?,” he stepped toward me with a warm,
incongruous smile and said, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Ken
Starr.” An introduction was indeed necessary. This was, in fact,
the first time I had met him.

I
found myself shaking his hand even as I struggled to decipher
the warmth he evinced. After all, in 1998, this was the
independent prosecutor who had investigated me, a former White
House intern; the man whose staff, accompanied by a group of
F.B.I. agents (Starr himself was not there), had hustled me into
a hotel room near the Pentagon and informed me that unless I
cooperated with them I could face 27 years in prison. This was
the man who had turned my 24-year-old life into a living hell in
his effort to investigate and prosecute President Bill Clinton
on charges that would eventually include obstruction of justice
and lying under oath—lying
about having maintained a long-term extramarital relationshipwith
me.

Ken
Starr asked me several times if I was “doing O.K.” A stranger
might have surmised from his tone that he had actually worried
about me over the years. His demeanor, almost pastoral, was
somewhere between avuncular and creepy. He kept touching my arm
and elbow, which made me uncomfortable.

I
turned and introduced him to my family. Bizarre as it may sound,
I felt determined, then and there, to remind him that, 20 years
before, he and his team of prosecutors hadn’t hounded and
terrorized just me but also my family—threatening to prosecute
my mom (if she didn’t disclose the private confidences I had
shared with her), hinting that they would investigate my dad’s
medical practice, and even deposing my aunt, with whom I was
eating dinner that night. And all because the Man in the Hat,
standing in front of me, had decided that a frightened young
woman could be useful in his larger case against the president
of the United States.

Understandably,
I was a bit thrown. (It was also confusing for me to see “Ken
Starr” as a human being. He was there, after all, with what
appeared to be his family.) I finally gathered my wits about
me—after an internal command ofGet
it together. “Though I wish I had made different choices
back then,” I stammered, “I wish that you and your office had
made different choices, too.” In hindsight, I later realized, I
was paving the way for him to apologize. But he didn’t. He
merely said, with the same inscrutable smile, “I know. It was
unfortunate.”

It
had been nearly 20 years since 1998. The next month would mark
the 20th anniversary of the Starr investigation expanding to
include me. The 20th anniversary ofmy
name becoming publicfor the first time.
And the 20th anniversary of anannus
horribilisthat would almost end
Clinton’s presidency, consume the nation’s attention, and alter
the course of my life.

Amid
a phalanx of photographers, Lewinsky heads to the
Federal Building in L.A., May 1998.

By
Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Getty Images.

If
I have learned anything since then, it is that you cannot run
away from who you are or from how you’ve been shaped by your
experiences. Instead, you must integrate your past and pres­ent.
AsSalman
Rushdie observedafter the fatwa was
issued against him, “Those who do not have power over the story
that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it,
deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change,
truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” I
have been working toward this realization for years. I have been
trying to find that power—a particularly Sisyphean task for a
person who has been gaslighted.

To
be blunt, I was diagnosed several years ago with post-traumatic
stress disorder, mainly from the ordeal of having been publicly
outed and ostracized back then. My trauma expedition has been
long, arduous, painful, and expensive. And it’s not over. (I
like to joke that my tombstone will read,MUTATIS MUTANDIS—“With
Changes Being Made.”)

I’VE
LIVED FOR SO LONG IN THE HOUSE OF GASLIGHT, CLINGING
TO MY EXPERIENCES AS THEY UNFOLDED IN MY 20S.

But
as I find myself reflecting on what happened, I’ve also come to
understand how my trauma has been, in a way, a microcosm of a
larger, national one. Both clinically and observationally,
something fundamental changed in our society in 1998, and it is
changing again as we enter the second year of the Trump
presidency in a
post-Cosby-Ailes-O’Reilly-Weinstein-Spacey-Whoever-Is-Next
world. The Starr investigation and the subsequent impeachment
trial ofBill
Clintonamounted to a crisis that
Americans arguably enduredcollectively—some
of us, obviously, more than others. It was a shambolic morass of
a scandal that dragged on for 13 months, and many politicians
and citizens became collateral damage—along with the nation’s
capacity for mercy, measure, and perspective.

Certainly,
the events of that year did not constitute a war or a terrorist
attack or a financial recession. They didn’t constitute a
natural catastrophe or a medical pandemic or what experts refer
to as “Big T” traumas. But something had shifted nonetheless.
And even after the Senate voted in 1999 to acquit President
Clinton on two articles of impeachment, we could not escape the
sense of upheaval and partisan division that lingered, settled
in, and stayed.

Maybe
you remember or have heard stories about how “the scandal”
saturated television and radio; newspapers, magazines, and the
Internet;Saturday
Night Liveand the Sunday-morning
opinion programs; dinner-party conversation and watercooler
discussions; late-night monologues and political talk shows (definitelythe
talk shows). InThe
Washington Postalone, there were 125
articles written about this crisis—in just the first 10 days.
Many parents felt compelled to discuss sexual issues with their
children earlier than they might have wanted to. They had to
explain why “lying”—even if the president did it—was not
acceptable behavior.

The
press was navigating unexplored terrain, too. Anonymous sources
seemed to emerge almost daily with new (and often false or
meaningless) revelations. There was a new commingling of
traditional news, talk radio, tabloid television, and online
rumor mills (fake news, anyone?). With the introduction of the
World Wide Web (in 1992-93) and two new cable news networks (Fox
News and MSNBC in 1996), the lines began to blur between fact
and opinion, news and gossip, private lives and public shaming.
The Internet had become such a propulsive force driving the flow
of information that when the Republican-led Judiciary Committee
of the House of Representatives decided to publish Ken Starr’s
commission’s “findings” online—just two days after he had
delivered them—it meant that (for me personally) every adult
with a modem could instantaneously peruse a copy and learn about
my private conversations, my personal musings (lifted from my
home computer), and, worse yet, my sex life.

Americans
young and old, red and blue, watched day and night. We watched a
beleaguered president and the embattled and often disenchanted
members of his administration as they protected him. We watched
a First Lady and First Daughter move through the year with grit
and grace. We watched a special prosecutor get pilloried (though
some thought he deserved it). We watched an American family—my
family—as a mother was forced to testify against her child and
as a father was forced to take his daughter to be fingerprinted
at the Federal Building. We watched the wholesale dissection of
a young, unknown woman—me—who, due to legal quarantine, was
unable to speak out on her own behalf.

How,
then, to get a handle, today, on what exactly happened back
then?

One
useful viewpoint is that of cognitive linguist George Lakoff. In
his bookMoral
Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t,Lakoff
observes that the connective fiber of our country is often best
represented through the metaphor of family: e.g., “our Founding
Fathers,” “Uncle Sam,” the concept of sending our sons and
daughters to war. Lakoff goes on to argue that, “for
conservatives, the nation is conceptualized (implicitly and
unconsciously) as a Strict Father family and, for liberals, as a
Nurturant Parent family.” Addressing the scandal itself, he
asserts that Clinton was widely perceived as “the naughty child”
and that, in line with the filial metaphor, “a family matter
[had turned] into an affair of state.” Thus, in many ways, the
crack in the foundation of the presidency was also a crack in
our foundation at home. Moreover, the nature of the violation—an
extramarital relationship—struck at the heart of one of
humanity’s most complicated moral issues: infidelity. (You’ll
forgive me if I leave that topic right there.)

The
result, I believe, was that in 1998 the person to whom we would
typically turn for reassurance and comfort during a national
crisis was remote and unavailable. The country, at that stage,
had no consistent, Rooseveltian voice of calm or reason or
empathy to make sense of the chaos. Instead, our Nurturer in
Chief, because of his own actions as much as the subterfuge of
his enemies, was a figurative “absent father.”

As
a society, we went through this together. And ever since, the
scandal has had an epigenetic quality, as if our cultural DNA
has slowly been altered to ensure its longevity. If you can
believe it, there has been at least one significant reference in
the press to that unfortunate spell in our history every day for
the past 20 years. Every. Single. Day.

The
fog of 1998 has lodged in our consciousness for many reasons.
The Clintons have remained pivotal political figures on the
global stage. Their disparagement has been vigorously abetted by
“this vast right-wing conspiracy,” as Hil­la­ry Clinton famously
put it. And the Clinton presidency segued into a bitter
electoral deadlock: the contestedBush
v. Goreshowdown, which would usher in
an era so turbulent that it would leave the lessons of the
Clinton years altogether murky. In succession came the
unthinkable (the attacks of September 11, 2001), protracted
conflicts (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), the Great
Recession, a state of perpetual gridlock in Washington, and then
the daily bedlam central to Trumpism. No matter how these
subsequent events dwarfed the impeachment and subsumed our
attention, maybe, just maybe, the long, unimpeded derivation of
this drama, ever since, is partly the result of 1998 having been
a year of unremitting crisis that we all endured but never
actually resolved—a low-grade collective trauma, perhaps?

I
discussed this idea with psychologist Jack Saul, founding
director of New York’s International Trauma Studies Program and
author ofCollective
Trauma, Collective Healing. “Collective trauma,” he told
me, “usually refers to the shared injuries to a population’s
social ecology due to a major catastrophe or chronic oppression,
poverty, and disease. While the events of 1998 in the United
States do not fit neatly into such a definition, they may have
led to some of the features we often associate with collective
traumas: social rupturing and a profound sense of distress, the
challenging of long-held assumptions about the world and
national identity, a constricted public narrative, and a process
of scapegoating and dehumanization.”

Until
recently (thank you,Harvey
Weinstein), historians hadn’t really had the perspective
to fully process and acknowledge that year of shame and
spectacle. And as a culture, we still haven’t properly examined
it. Re-framed it. Integrated it. And transformed it. My hope,
given the two dec­ades that have passed, is that we are now at a
stage where we can untangle the complexities and context (maybe
even with a little compassion), which might help lead to an
eventual healing—and a systemic transformation. As Haruki
Murakami has written, “When you come out of the storm you won’t
be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all
about.”Who
were we then? Who are we now?

‘I’m
so sorry you were so alone.” Those seven words undid me. They
were written in a recent private exchange I had with one of the
brave women leading the #MeToo movement. Somehow, coming from
her—a recognition of sorts on a deep, soulful level—they landed
in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears. Yes, I
had received many letters of support in 1998. And, yes (thank
God!), I had my family and friends to support me. But by and
large I had been alone.So.
Very. Alone.Publicly Alone—abandoned
most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew
me well and intimately. That I had made mistakes, on that we can
all agree. But swimming in that sea of Aloneness was terrifying.

Isolation
is such a powerful tool to the subjugator. And yet I don’t
believe I would have felt so isolated had it all happened today.
One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energized
movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in
support of one another. And the volume in numbers has translated
into volume of public voice. Historically, he who shapes the
story (and it is so often a he) creates “the truth.” But this
collective rise in decibel level has provided a resonance for
women’s narratives. If the Internet was a bête noire to me in
1998, its stepchild—social media—has been a savior for millions
of women today (notwithstanding all the cyberbullying, online
harassment, doxing, and slut-shaming). Virtually anyone can
share her or his #MeToo story and be instantly welcomed into a
tribe. In addition, the democratizing potential of the Internet
to open up support networks and penetrate what used to be closed
circles of power is something that was unavailable to me back
then. Power, in that case, remained in the hands of the
president and his minions, the Congress, the prosecutors, and
the press.

There
are many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be
heard before mine. (There are even some people who feel my White
House experiences don’t have a place in this movement, as what
transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual
assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross
abuse of power.) And yet, everywhere I have gone for the past
few months, I’ve been asked about it. My response has been the
same: I am in awe of the sheer courage of the women who have
stood up and begun to confront entrenched beliefs and
institutions. But as for me, my history, and how I fit in
personally? I’m sorry to say I don’t have a definitive answer
yet on the meaning of all of the events that led to the 1998
investigation; I am unpacking and reprocessing what happened to
me. Over and over and over again.

For
two dec­ades, I have been working on myself, my trauma, and my
healing. And, naturally, I have grappled with the rest of the
world’s interpretations and Bill Clinton’s re-interpretations of
what happened. But in truth, I have done this at arm’s length.
There have been so many barriers to this place of
self-reckoning.

The
reason this is difficult is that I’ve lived for such a long time
in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they
unfolded in my 20s and railing against the untruths that painted
me as an unstable stalker and Servicer in Chief. An inability to
deviate from the internal script of what I actually experienced
left little room for re-evaluation; I cleaved to what I “knew.”
So often have I struggled with my own sense of agency versus
victimhood. (In 1998, we were living in times in which women’s
sexuality was a marker of their agency—“owning desire.” And yet,
I felt that if I saw myself as in any way a victim, it would
open the door to choruses of: “See, you did merely service
him.”)

What
it means to confront a long-held belief (one clung to like a
life raft in the middle of the ocean) is to challenge your own
perceptions and allow thepentimentopainting
that is hidden beneath the surface to emerge and be seen in the
light of a new day.

Given
my PTSD and my understanding of trauma, it’s very likely that my
thinking would not necessarily be changing at this time had it
not been for the #MeToo movement—not only because of the new
lens it has provided but also because of how it has offered new
avenues toward the safety that comes from solidarity. Just four
years ago, inan
essay for this magazine, I wrote the following: “Sure, my
boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this
point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the
aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his
powerful position.” I now see how problematic it was that the
two of us even got to a place where there was a question of
consent. Instead, the road that led there was littered with
inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege. (Full
stop.)

Now,
at 44, I’m beginning (just
beginning) to consider the implications of the power
differentials that were so vast between a president and a White
House intern. I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such
a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.
(Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do
exist even when the sex has been consensual.)

But
it’s also complicated. Very, very complicated. The dictionary
definition of “consent”? “To give permission for something to
happen.” And yet what did the “something” mean in this instance,
given the power dynamics, his position, and my age? Was the
“something” just about crossing a line of sexual (and later
emotional) intimacy? (An intimacy I wanted—with a 22-year-old’s
limited understanding of the consequences.) He was my boss. He
was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my
senior, with enough life experience to know better. He was, at
the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first
job out of college. (Note to the trolls, both Democratic and
Republican: none of the above excuses me for my responsibility
for what happened. I meet Regret every day.)

“This”
(sigh) is as far as I’ve gotten in my re-evaluation; I want to
be thoughtful. But I know one thing for certain: part of what
has allowed me to shift is knowing I’m not alone anymore. And
for that I am grateful.

I—we—owe
a huge debt of gratitude to the #MeToo and Time’s Up heroines.
They are speaking volumes against the pernicious conspiracies of
silence that have long protected powerful men when it comes to
sexual assault, sexual harassment, and abuse of power.

Thankfully,
Time’s Up is addressing the need women have for financial
resources to help defray the huge legal costs involved in
speaking out. But there is another cost to consider. For many,
the Reckoning has also been are-triggering.
Sadly, what I see with every new allegation, and with every
posting of “#MeToo,” is another person who may have to cope with
the re-emergence of trauma. My hope is that through Time’s Up
(or, perhaps, another organization) we can begin to meet the
need for the resources that are required for the kind of trauma
therapy vital for survival and recovery. Regrettably, it’s often
only the privileged who can afford the time and the money to get
the help they deserve.

Through
all of this, during the past several months, I have been
repeatedly reminded of a powerful Mexican proverb: “They tried
to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”